Under the Electric Sky: Creating the Perfect Soundtrack

There is a scene in Under the Electric Sky when two ravers —Alli and Matt— get married at EDC. She wears a white tutu and carries a single daisy; he wears a fuzzy white vest and pants with “PLUR” spelled out across the rear. The ceremony is the culmination of their 15-year relationship. Kaskade’s “Eyes” plays in the background.

“Look into my eyes,” the pop-leaning EDM track beckons as Alli walks down the aisle. The synth rises, the anthem peaks, and the couple says “I do” as the beat drops and one of the greatest parties on earth rages all around them. It is tear-jerking movie magic made all the more powerful by the incorporation of a song that so effectively captures the moment.

It was the job of the filmmakers to assemble a soundtrack that would encapsulate the spirit of EDC and help tell the stories that happened within it. To source this music, directors Jane Lipsitz and Dan Cutforth, along with music supervisor Jason Bentley, looked (and listened) no further than EDC 2013 itself. Much of the film’s soundtrack was taken directly from the soundboards of the festival; it also includes original compositions by Kaskade.

“The film is wall-to-wall music,” says Bentley.

Under the Electric Sky, which premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, follows a handful of attendees on their journeys to and at EDC Las Vegas 2013. These six narratives are cut with artist and industry figure interviews and bombastic performances by DJs including Hardwell, Afrojack, Gareth Emery, Alex Kidd, Rebecca & Fiona, Fatboy Slim and Jamie Jones. Altogether, the film is a snapshot of the moment when EDC—and EDM at large—transcended all expectations and went next-level in size and popularity.

“When you talk about EDM,” director Jane Lipsitz says, “there’s definitely something very specific and unifying that other music festivals don’t necessarily have.”

With their background directing reality TV shows including Top Chef and Project Runway, producing the Justin Bieber film Never Say Never, and directing the Katy Perry biopic Part of Me, Cutforth and Lipsitz had ample experience in not only weaving multiple narratives, but working on projects in which music played a starring role.

“We looked at the film as a musical,” Lipsitz says of Under the Electric Sky, “where the songs were instrumental in terms of helping propel the story forward.”

Such sonic propulsion makes for many epic movie moments: the aforementioned wedding scene, a moment when Jose—a young man with scoliosis—crowd surfs in his wheelchair during Hardwell’s set, and through the use of monster hits like Avicii’s “Wake Me Up” and Calvin Harris’ “Feel So Close.” These songs provide the right tone and feel for the scenes in which they’re used, and, as two of the biggest songs of 2013, put a historical timestamp on the film.

“The first time I heard ‘Wake Me Up’ was at EDC,” says Cutforth, “and of course now it’s such a mega-hit that you wonder if it’s almost too much to use it in the movie. But it’s the perfect track for the moment because the scene is about this couple that really connected for the first time at an Avicii concert.”

Insomniac CEO and Founder Pasquale Rotella became aware of Lipsitz and Cutforth after his wife took him to see the Katy Perry movie (“rather reluctantly, as he tells it,” laughs Cutforth). Rotella loved Part of Me and reached out to the directors with his concept for Under the Electric Sky. Cutforth and Lipsitz jumped on board, although neither of them were more than casual fans of the music.

They were thus thrilled when Jason Bentley—the music director at L.A.’s taste-making public radio station KCRW, as well as a dance music aficionado and longtime Insomniac collaborator—signed on as music supervisor. Coordinating the musical elements for a film largely about music was a big job, and Bentley proved crucial in creating a 360-degree sonic representation of EDC.

“There are a lot of people who wouldn’t even be in the movie if it hadn’t been for Jason,” says Cutforth.

Bentley pushed to include Dillon Francis and more underground DJs, including Jamie Jones. He also nodded to the history of the genre by including classic dance tracks during a flashback sequence.

Rotella took special interest in this segment of the movie, as he and Bentley rose through the early ’90s rave scene together. They agreed to use Josh Wink’s 1995 acid breaks/techno single “Higher State of Consciousness” and Joey Beltram’s 1990 song “Energy Flash.” “Pasquale and I were of the same mind on it,” Bentley says. “We know where we’re coming from.”

Bentley recruited Kaskade to write the original compositions used throughout the film. “I was hearing certain interests in orchestral elements in his music,” Bentley says. “If you listen to a lot of the tracks on his last album, Atmosphere, there are all of these surging orchestral bits.” Bentley also recognized scoring tendencies in a remix he commissioned from Kaskade in relation to Tron: Legacy, a film for which Bentley also provided the music supervision.

“It felt like he was sort of dabbling in this world,” Bentley says. “To me, this film was the perfect opportunity for him to not only explore that further, but also stay firmly in his comfort zone, as far as his scene he’s come up through.”

Kaskade’s contribution includes the film’s theme “Summer Nights,” a pulsing anthem that beckons listeners to “feel the sound” and is featured in the opening and closing credits.

Not everyone has an EDC near them. I think there are a lot of people who will get their first appreciation of it through this movie.

“Kaskade had never scored a film before,” says Lipsitz, “so we were definitely a little nervous; but he had such an amazing instinct for the ebb and flow of the film and the emotional tenor we were trying to achieve.” Scenes in which a crew of Boston ravers visits their friend’s grave and a young couple parts ways after EDC are both stirring moments scored with Kaskade’s compositions.

At just over 70 minutes long, Under the Electric Sky has 80 cues—movie speak for individual moments of music. Half of these cues are Kaskade’s score, and the other half are licensed songs. Of those, 20 were sourced directly from EDC sets.

“A DJ would play for an hour or more,” Bentley says, “and we’d be able to look at a set and say ‘Let’s take this section because it’s really strong.’”

The next step was clearing the rights to this live material, a task that occasionally proved tricky. Certain unauthorized remixes were left out of the movie simply because they weren’t clearable. Bentley says he’s particularly proud of getting the rights to “Echoes”—by Henrik B, Niklas Gustavsson and Peter Johansson—which in the research process he found actually had to be licensed from The Police, as it samples the band’s 1980 song “Voices in my Head.”

Choosing which DJs to feature in the film was also partially determined by which ones wanted to participate. “There were a few artists who said ‘Let me just sign whatever you need right now,’” Bentley says. “Tommie Sunshine, for instance, was an absolute delight; but without naming names, with some of these big-name DJs, it was so difficult to get them.”

Rotella, who has close relationships with many of those big-name artists, personally reached out to several DJs to ask them to be in the movie. Such a call, says Bentley, “would cut through the bureaucracy very swiftly.”

Shooting these performances presented its own set of challenges, as the primary main stage camera was directly in front of the subwoofers, and the six people operating the 3D camera and crane couldn’t communicate over the massive sounds emanating from the DJ booth.

“We were literally writing things down on whiteboards and holding them up so that we could communicate what we wanted to do,” Cutforth says. “It was an extremely frustrating process, but we ended up figuring out a way to do it.”

The improvisation paid off. Those main-stage scenes, featuring Afrojack, Tiësto, Avicii, Armin van Buuren, Hardwell, Dash Berlin, and the 80,000 people dancing in front of the stage, look epic—especially in 3D. The main-stage crew also captured one of the film’s most climactic moments, when a character named Sadie (who brought some of her grandfather’s ashes to spread at EDC) is selected by her favorite act, Above & Beyond, to join them onstage during their rendition of “Sun & Moon.”

Sadie’s response—barely keeping her composure while telling the camera that the whole point of the experience is to take the positivity she’s experienced back out into the world—is another moment designed not simply to tug at heartstrings, but to demonstrate how and why electronic dance music is powerful.

“One of the things we found interesting is the perception that EDM is made for people who are taking drugs, and that there’s nothing substantial or substantive about the music,” says Cutforth. “What the movie shows is that the impact of this music on people is huge.”

Under the Electric Sky is thus a top-notch keepsake for people who were there, as well as a point of access for mainstream audiences to experience the spirit and culture of electronic dance music.

“The real value of the film is to be a primer, an introduction,” says Bentley. “Not everyone has an EDC near them. I think there are a lot of people who will get their first appreciation of it through this movie.”

More informed audiences are also feeling the film. “Even people who came into it with a cynical mindset and felt they were going to be fed something that was propaganda or fluff, I think have been surprised by how powerful the stories are,” Cutforth says. “People connect with the movie because it portrays really recognizable human stories about love and friendship and finding a place to belong.”

The music of Under the Electric Sky is largely responsible for giving audiences a sense of the EDC experience, as well as the values of peace, love, unity and respect the scene is famous for. Turn the speakers up loud enough, and audiences might even feel the bass as well.

“That’s one of the reasons I’m excited for people to see this in theaters,” Cutforth says, “because it becomes a communal experience for them too.”

Purchase tickets to Under The Electric Sky here.

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